Plantcestors: My Friend Fennel

A common local weed: friend or Foeniculum?

I recall puffs of yellow and green along sidewalks and in abandoned lots in the Mission and Potrero Hill as an elementary school kid. I grew up in San Francisco and there is a scent that wafts in the 3pm winds in August that reminds me of hiding in secret gardens. This familiar friend, Fennel formerly known as Foeniculum vulgaris, has marked the landscape of in-between spaces in the Bay Area for several generations. 

But not forever! If you picked up an encyclopedia or an herbal reference book, you would find the origin of this green friend is The Mediterranean. “Close enough!” the plant likely thought when they found their way here, one of the five mediterranean climates in the world, several centuries ago. Likely as an accident, spreading from the “footsteps” of the Spanish colonizers or culinary pursuits of Italian immigrants. Now, along roadsides the color of the yellow flowers are so abundant and bright, they make your neck turn as you go by on your way to the first days of school.

For me, Fennel has always felt like a friend. Gentle, easy to be with, familiar and sweet. The taste of the leaf or seed as a gently warming flavor-packing wild snack. In many gardens I've enjoyed mixing the flavor with a nearby ripe blackberry in late summer.

August Fennel near the freeway in 'Frisco

These plants grow year-round, yet they are most apparent when they get tall over the summer and create these constellation-like seed heads. They remind me of the stars, as they bolt up towards the sky and then turn to seeds, which is the part most commonly used in herbal medicine.

Not to be missed are the tasty root of the domesticated fennel, which is sold at farmers markets and grocery stores year-round. According to Real Food Encyclopedia, this variety was developed in the 17th century and is known as Florence Fennel. The stalk bulbs out at the bottom and it is much more tender than the wild, or “bitter” variety. You may have seen the white, anise-flavored root on your dish before, caramelized in a pan of roasted veggies, on pizza or sliced thinly in a winter salad.

I don't recommend going out to your backyard or an empty lot to harvest wild fennel root, however. This variety has a very dinky and fibrous root that is known to gardeners as a difficult and pernicious weed.

The leaf, or frond, of wild fennel can also be used in salads and the tender stock makes a lovely addition to an omelet. Add any part of the hard, woody part of the plant to the stock pot for a veggie broth. The pollen, found most readily in August or September is a high-end garnish found in pasta sauces and pizzas. Truly a use-it-all kind of plant, Fennel dances on the line between medicine and food, blurring it.

But the seeds! The seeds are what you find mixed with brightly-colored sweetness at the front counter of an Indian restaurant or cooked into breads, sauces, really anything you want to have a burst of a licorice flavor.

(This might be a good moment for a disambiguation; licorice candy tastes like more like fennel (Foeniculum vulgare), or aniseed (Pimpinella anisum) or Star Anise (Illicium verum) than the herb licorice, (Glycyrrhiza glabra) all of which aside from Fennel, do not grow easily in Mediterranean climate of the Bay Area.

A close up on a fennel field in August.

This is because Fennel seeds, which has been cultivated since the times of the Greeks and Romans (in present-day Greece and Italy), is a famous carminative. This means that consuming the plant, in particular the seeds, can support healthy digestion and reduce gas and bloating. This is due to the presence of volatile oils that also act as gentle antimicrobials when prepared as food or medicine. I've often added dry fennel seeds to bread, or added it to a decoction of other woody herbs for a warming caffeine-free chai. In September and October, when the seeds ripen I've often used fresh green seeds to make a tincture (a mash of the seeds, preserved in alcohol or glycerine) for tummy troubles all year round. This is a gentle remedy, safe for kids, adults and elders alike.

For years I have stood under fennel, in the height of their August glory, and whispered to the plants that while tidy rows of cultivated gardens are beautiful, the wild, assertive quality of fennel holds a certain type of awe. A similar awe struck me some years ago when I was cooking with fennel seed, and upon adding the seed to a pot of hot water, the seed popped open like a corn kernel, to release a small (tiny!) yellow flower.

So as mundane and common as this plant hiding in plain sight, often found faded, crammed into the back of a spice cabinet, invariably going stale after many years, there has been a slow and curious burn for me as I walk the path of an herbalist.

With this plant, and several others that I will touch on in this series, The Portal, about the plant-place-relationships with Southern Italy, there was a familiar-yet strangeness of being in the place where the plant is said to have originated. Fennel, or "finocchio" (of which the Italian word is also used to mean the word "queer." More on this, below) is a part of the fabric and medicine of Southern Italy. It's been a staple to the medicine and food of this place for 1000’s of generations.

While in Southern Italy I deepened my understanding of this familiar summer-star-stalky friend: as support to the liver, to support menstrual cramps, supportive as a muscle relaxant and used as an expectorant in cough syrups. It’s commonly used with fenugreek in lactation teas and as a tea or syrup to soothe a singer's throat. 

Excerpt from my travel journal, an illustrated materia medica of Fennel.

Above is an excerpt form my watercolor travel journalI created over lunch at Madonna dell'Alto, a church on the top of a mountain in northern Sicily from a materia medica written by Southern-Italian-American herbalists Jade Alicandro and Kara Wood. The liquid I used to paint with was the local wine, note the color of the liver and inside of the uterus illustration is dried wine.

What fennel has taught me is that the magic and mystery of our ancestral knowledge does not need to be complex or difficult to find. It can be ordinary, mundane and abundant. In fact, it may be something that has been there all along, like the fennel seeds in the spice cabinet or the 3pm anise-scented winds of my childhood.

When I returned from Southern Italy I approached my spice cabinet and this pesky-plant friend with a renowned awe and delight. No longer a weed or urban eye-sore, rather an easy-going and useful neighbor.

Somewhat of an aside, yet connected through the fabric of time and place is the San Francisco institution Finocchio’s. I came to learn about the well-known nightclub and bar through the historical film Screaming Queens. In operation from 1936 - 1999, Finocchio’s was first located in San Francisco’s Tenderloin Neighborhood, our Transgender Cultural District,  and later moved to North Beach, the Italian Neighborhood of San Francisco. 

Finocchio’s was one of the first drag bars in the city and yet according to Wikipedia, the name of the bar came from the owner’s family name, no connection to the Italian slang “finocchio” for “queer” or “gay.” I wonder, and I will never know, the association of the bar, the slang and the plant. A recent wander through Colma’s Italian Cemetery (San Francisco’s neighboring town of mostly cemeteries) provided no answers, yet the name “Finocchio” is found prominently among the Aliotos and Molinaris on gravestones, all well known names of historical North Beach.

Fennel’s medicine is friendly, inviting, playful and gentle. Their warmth encourages ease of use as food and medicine and their prevalence in our Mediterranean climate makes it easy to build a relationship with as a plant-ancestor. How delightful that one of the most frustrating weeds of our gardens is a portal to the past and a go-to remedy for the present.

Did you enjoy this post? I invite you to join my newsletter Whale Mail, where I publish this series, The Portal: plant teachings from Southern Italy, along with weekly tips for holistic wellbeing, event announcements and more!🐋

References

Alicandro, Jade, and Kara Wood. “RadiciSiciliane: Botanico Sacro.” 5 June 2022.

“Fennel.” FoodPrint, 12 Mar. 2024, foodprint.org/real-food/fennel/#:~:text=Fennel%20(Foeniculum%20vulgare)%20is%20a,both%20medicinal%20and%20culinary%20purposes.

“Finocchio’s Club.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 23 Mar. 2025, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finocchio%27s_Club. 

“Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria Film by Victor Silverman & Susan Stryker.” 2005, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WASW9dRBU. Accessed 12 Feb. 2025.